Amgueddfa Cymru — National Museum Wales

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Dress

This elaborate court mantua from the 1720s possibly belonged to Lady Rachel Morgan, the wife of Sir William Morgan of Tredegar House, near Newport. Lady Rachel was the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire, and brought with her a dowry of £20,000. In the 1790s her descendants invested in industrial projects. They opened coal mines and iron works on their land and built canals and tramways.

The mantua consists of an open-fronted gown and a matching petticoat. The blue damask, which is heavily embroidered with silver thread, was woven at Spitalfields in London, an area once known for its silk weavers and mercers. Fully assimilated into the ruling class of England, the style-conscious Welsh gentry looked towards London and the Continent for the lead in fashion and good taste. Although the gown was altered during the 1800s, probably to wear as fancy dress, it remains an outstanding example of its kind.

Court mantua & petticoat. Light blue silk satin damask/plain taffeta weave of English origin (Spitalfields), heavily embroidered with silver thread. The mantua has been altered, and much of the train has been cut away. The damask fabric has a stylised floral pattern. The selvage consists of three red stripes, alternating with two cream stripes.

The gown has a square neck line. The edge surrounding neck and front down to the waist is folded inwards and stitch secured with tacking stitches. This double-thickness of fabric is then folded back outwards to form lapels, which are decorated with embroidery. From the waist down, the embroidery continues down the front opening of the robe, slightly broadening towards the lower edge (to a width of 16.5cm). The front sections of the gown are continuous from the shoulder down to the lower edge.

The sleeves are made from a single piece of fabric stitched together with an underarm seam and are gathered into the shoulder. They extend to the elbow where there is a double-cuff of embroidered damask which has been stitched to the end of the sleeves. The cuffs are stiffened with a parchment interlining.

The lower section of the mantua is lined with eight pieces of plain blue silk fabric. The upper four of these pieces are stitched to the outer blue damask fabric, whereas the lower four pieces extend beyond the damask and have raw edges (apart from the straight end, which is finished with a slip-stitched double turn-back). The lower four pieces meet in the middle and are stitched together down the centre back. Whereas the two pieces further up splay outwards (coming round to line the lower front of the gown) and are only partly joined down the middle and the upper/front two pieces do not meet. At the front, the pieces are arranged so that the selvages run vertically in line with the front opening. Whereas as they come round to the back, the selvages run in a more horizontal direction; the lowest section does not have selvages at all.

The back of the gown is made from two pieces, joined by a centre back seam. It extends beyond the waist, to a line down 63cm from the neck. On either side of the back, there are two vertical pleats. The folds are so wide/deep that they meet on the interior and are stitched together down the centre back for a section of c.18cm (making it appear as though the back section is lined). The sleeves and front of bodice section are unlined. There are side seams and long vertical darts down either side of the front. Towards the top, they change direction and run towards the shoulder. A short section (c.11cm) of white tape is stitched over the side seams from the inside. The dart on the proper right side is hand stitched with dark blue thread though there is evidence of previous stitches using light blue silk thread in-line with the blue ones and along the inner edge of the dart. On the proper leftL side, the original (?) light blue stitches are still in place as well as a strip of plain blue silk which is stitched to the inner edge of the dart; the strip is folded in half, resulting in a neat upper edge (other edges are left raw).

Beyond the pleated upper back of the gown, there is a large section of plain blue, very light-weight silk fabric. This section in itself is pieced together from six individual pieces: two large rectanguar central sections and two smaller elongated triangular sections on either side. The end of the rectangular sections is left unfinished and is considerably shorter than the plain blue fabric lining the inside. It is not clear if anything has been trimmed off deliberately, or whether it was left unfinished simply because it would be bunched up and not on view when worn. In addition, the back is also pieced together with a larger and a smaller rectangular section of silk damask, both of which extend around the lower side edge of the mantua, before the edge elongates into becoming the train.

There are three darts at either side of the waist: two vertical ones towards the back and a horizontal one right at the side. All three have been unpicked (allegedly by Janet Arnold when she examined the mantua in the 1970s) as she believed those were put in as part of a later alteration and are not original to the mantua's construction. Original stitches in light blue silk and linen threads.

The petticoat is original/has not been altered. Embroidery begins 9-10 inches down below the waist. Laid and couched metal thread embroidery was carried out as a large design on a flat piece of material made of joined widths of silk (21 inches wide). Back panel is less elaborately embroidered from approx. 15ins. above the hem level, where it would have been concealed by the train. Most of the silver thread is couched but in some parts it is taken through to the reverse of the skirt. The material is gathered into pleats which are stitched to a plain silk yoke below the waist. This shows a very early attempt to extend the fullness of the skirt sideways over a widening hoop in this way. The lower edge of the petticoat is bound in a 2cm wide patterned braid of silver coloured metal thread wefts and cellulosic warps. It has a 38cm long slit at centre back and is fastened with ties that extend from a blue, tabby-woven silk waistband which encapsulates the upper edge of the petticoat. The waistband is 3/4in wide. Four lengths of white cotton tape have been stitched to different points around the waistband, probably to help spread the weight of the very heavy petticoat, either during wear or at a later stage, for display. The lengths of tape were probably originally longer and would have passed over the shoulders. 144cm length of waistband. The pattern of the embroidery sometimes, but not always, follows the pattern of the damask.